Traditional product sensors in electronic article surveillance (EAS) focus on security of retail merchandise within a retailer's “brick-and-mortar” stores. Various technologies exist that enable retailers or manufacturers to “tag” retail merchandise to help reduce occurrences of shoplifting, or to alert when incidents of shoplifting occur. For example, acousto-magnetic tags may be affixed to merchandise and may be activated and deactivated by the retailer. An activated tag may trigger a proximity alarm when a shoplifter carries the merchandise past the alarm (e.g., normally positioned at a storefront entrance).
The ubiquity of online e-commerce technology (e.g., online shopping) has enabled retailers to reach consumers much more broadly than possible with brick-and-mortar storefronts alone. However, most retail inventory still exists solely in “offline” stores. For many smaller retailers, listing their products in an online environment requires administrative overhead or technical expertise that may represent a daunting process, and may be economically unattractive relative to the work required (e.g., based on the amount of work to list, or relative to the difference in additional sales that may be generated). Further, once listed online, inventory management between in-store sales and the status of online listings becomes an additional administrative burden on the retailer.
The headings provided herein are merely for convenience and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the terms used. Like numbers in the Figures indicate like components.